Recollections of My Childhood and Youth Part 32

Supposing I were to be ill like you, how should I pa.s.s away the time!

There was no school at Camarino, where I was born, and I lived in the country till I was eighteen, and learnt nothing at all. We were nine brothers and sisters; there was seldom any food in the house; sometimes we worked; sometimes we lay on the ground. It is unfortunate that I cannot read, for I am not at all beautiful; if I could only do something, I should be able to get a husband."

"Don't you know any of the letters, Filomena?"

"No, sir." "Don't trouble about that. You are happier than I, who know a great deal more than you. You laugh and sing all day long; I neither laugh nor sing." "Dear sir, you will laugh, and sing as well, when you get home. Then your little girl (_ragazza_) who is so _appa.s.sionato_ that she writes four letters a day, will make _fete_ for you, and I think that when you go to the _osteria_ with your friends you laugh.

It is enough now for you to be patient." As she had spoken about getting a husband, I asked: "Are your sisters married?" "They are all older than I, and married." (Saving her pride in the first part of her reply.) After a few minutes' reflection she went on: "I, for my part, will not have a husband under thirty; the young ones all beat their wives." Shortly afterwards, I put an end to the audience. We had had a few short discussions, and I had been vanquished, apparently by her logic, but chiefly by reason of her better mastery of the language, and because I defended all sorts of things in joke. At last I said: "Have you noticed, Filomena, that when we argue it is always you who silence me? So you can see, in spite of all my reading, that you have better brains than I." This compliment pleased her; she blushed and smiled, without being able to find a reply.

She realises the Northern ideal of the young woman not spoilt by novel- reading. Nor does she lack intelligence, although she literally does not know what North and South mean; she is modest, refined in her way, and happy over very little. For the moment she is engaged in making the little dog bark like mad by aggravatingly imitating the mewing of a cat.

Later. The boy from the cafe brings me my supper. What has become of Filomena? I wonder if she is out? I cannot hear her having her evening fight with the boy in the pa.s.sage. She likes to hit him once a day for exercise.

Maria comes in. "Do you hear the cannon, sir? What do you think it is?"

I reply calmly: "It is war; the Zouaves (papal troops) are coming."

Maria goes out and declares the reply of the oracle in the next room.

Some cannon salutes really were being fired. Maria hurries down into the street to hear about it and Filomena comes in to me. "I am afraid," she says. "Do you mean it?" She was laughing and trembling at the same time.

I saw that the fear was quite real. "Is it possible that you can be so afraid? There is not really any war or any Zouaves, it was only a joke."

That pacified her. "I was afraid, if you like," said she, "when the Italians (the Romans never call themselves Italians) marched into Rome.

One sh.e.l.l came after another; one burst on the roof of the house opposite." "Who are you for, the Pope or Vittorio?" "For neither. I am a stupid girl; I am for the one that will feed and clothe me. But I have often laughed at the Zouaves. One of them was standing here one day, taking pinch after pinch of snuff, and he said to me: 'The Italians will never enter Rome.' I replied: 'Not if they take snuff, but they will if they storm the town.'" "Do you think that the Pope will win?" "No, I think his cause is lost. Perhaps there will even come a time when no one goes to churches here." _She_: "Who goes to church! The girls to meet their lovers; the young men to see a pretty shop-girl. We laugh at the priests." "Why?" "Because they are ridiculous: if it thunders, they say at once that it is a sign from G.o.d. The sky happens to be flaming red, like it was last October. That was because the Italians entered Rome in September. Everything is a sign from G.o.d, a sign of his anger, his exasperation. He is not angry, that is clear enough. If he had not wanted the Italians to come in, they would not have come, but would all have died at once." She said this last with great earnestness and pathos, with an upward movement of her hand, and bowed her head, like one who fears an unknown power. Maria returned, saying people thought the shots meant that Garibaldi had come. Said I: "There, he is a brave man. Try to be like him, Filomena. It is not right for a big strong girl to tremble." _She_: "I am not strong, but still, I am stronger than you, who have been weakened so much by your illness,--and yet, who knows, you have been much better the last few days. Shall we try?" I placed my right hand in hers, first tested her strength a little, and then found to my surprise that her arm was not much stronger than that of an ordinary lady; then I bent my fingers a little, and laid her very neatly on the floor. I was sitting in bed; she was on her knees in front of the bed, but I let her spring up. It was a pretty sight; the blue- black hair, the laughing mouth with the fine, white teeth, the brown, smiling eyes. As she got up, she said: "You are well now; I am not sorry to have been conquered."

Have taken my second flight. I have been at the Moccoli fete, had myself carried and driven there and back, like last time. Saredo had taken a room on the Corso; I saw everything from there, and now I have the delightful impressions of it all left. What exuberant happiness! What jubilation! What childlike gaiety! It is like going into a nursery and watching the children play, hearing them shout and enjoy themselves like mad, as one can shout and enjoy things one's self no longer.

I arrived late and only saw the end of the processions; far more carriages, wilder shouting, more madness,--bacchantic, stormy,--than last time. The whole length of the Corso was one shriek of laughter. And how many lovely faces at the windows, on the balconies and verandas!

Large closed carriages with hidden music inside and graceful ladies on the top. As _i preti_ (the Catholic papers) had said that all who took part in the Carnival were paid by the government, a number of men and women, in the handsomest carriages--according to the _Nuova Roma_ for to-day, more than 20,000--had the word _pagato_ (paid) fastened to their caps, which evoked much amus.e.m.e.nt. Then the lancers cleared the street at full galop for the horse races (_barberi_), and at once an immense procession of Polichinelli and ridiculous equestrians in Don Quixote armour organised itself and rode down the Corso at a trot in parody. Then came the mad, snorting horses. Then a few minutes,--and night fell over the seven heights of Rome, and the Corso itself lay in darkness. Then the first points of light began to make their appearance. Here below, one little s.h.i.+mmer of light, and up there another, and two there, and six here, and ten down there to the left, and hundreds on the right, and then thousands, and many, many thousands. From one end of the great long street to the other, from the first floor to the roof of every house and every palace, there is one steady twinkling of tiny flames, of torches, of large and small lights; the effect is surprising and peculiar. As soon as the first light appeared, young men and girls ran and tried to blow each other's candles out. Even the children took part in the game; I could see into several houses, where it was going on briskly. Then, from every side-street decorated carriages began to drive on to the Corso again, but this time every person held a candle in his hand. Yes, and that was not all! at least every other of the large waggons--they were like immense boxes of flowers--had, on poles, or made fast, Bengal fire of various colours, which lighted up every house they went past, now with a red, now with a green flare. And then the thousands of small candles, from every one in the throng, from carriages, balconies, verandas, sparkled in the great flame, fighting victoriously with the last glimmer of daylight. People ran like mad down the Corso and fanned out the lights in the carriages.

But many a Roman beauty found a better way of lighting up her features without exposing herself to the risk of having her light put out.

Opposite me, for instance, on the second floor, a lovely girl was standing in a window. In the shutter by her side she had fixed one of those violent red flares so that she stood in a bright light, like sunlight seen through red gla.s.s, and it was impossible not to notice her. Meanwhile, the people on the balconies held long poles in their hands, with which they unexpectedly put out the small candles in the carriages. You heard incessantly, through the confusion, the shouts of individuals one to another, and their jubilation when a long-attempted and cleverly foiled extinguis.h.i.+ng was at length successful, and the clapping and shouts of _bravo!_ at an unusually brightly lighted and decorated carriage. The pickpockets meanwhile did splendid business; many of the Danes lost their money.

At eight o'clock I was in bed again, and shortly afterwards the people of the house came home for a moment. Filomena looked splendid, and was very talkative. "_Lei e ingra.s.sato_," she called in through the door. It is her great pleasure that the hollows in my cheeks are gradually disappearing. She was now ascribing a special efficacy in this direction to Moccoli Eve.

At half-past ten in the morning, there is a curious spectacle in the street here. At that time Domenico comes and the lottery begins.

Lotteries are forbidden in Rome, but Domenico earns his ten lire a day by them. He goes about this and the neighbouring streets bawling and shouting until he has disposed of his ninety tickets.

Girls and women lean out through the windows and call out the numbers they wish to have--in this respect they are boundlessly credulous. They do not believe in the Pope; but they believe that there are numbers which they must become possessed of that day, even at the highest price, which is two soldi. The soldi are thrown out through the window, and each one remembers her own number. Then Domenico goes through all the numbers in a loud voice, that there may be no cheating. A child draws a number out of the bag, and Domenico shouts: "Listen, all Purificazione, No. 34 has won, listen, Purificazione, 34 ... 34." The disappointed faces disappear into the houses. All those who have had 33, 35 and 36 rail against unjust Fate, in strong terms.

At the first rattle of the lottery bag, Filomena rushes in here, opens the window, and calls for a certain number. If anyone else wants it, she must manage to find two soldi in her pocket. If I fling a few soldi from my bed towards the window, this facilitates the search. However, we never win. Filomena declares that I have indescribable ill-luck in gambling, and suggests a reason.

She was again singing outside. I called her, wanting to know what it was she kept singing all the time. "They are songs from the mountains," she replied, "all _canzone d'amore_." "Say them slowly, Filomena. I will write them down." I began, but was so delighted at the way she repeated the verses, her excellent declamatory and rhythmic sense, that I was almost unable to write. And to my surprise, I discovered that they were all what we call ritornellos. But written down, they are dull larvae, compared with what they are with the proper p.r.o.nunciation and expression. What is it Byron says?:

I love the language, that soft b.a.s.t.a.r.d Latin, Which melts like kisses from a female mouth, And sounds as if it should be writ on satin.

I shall really feel a void when Filomena goes away. The unfortunate part of it is that her dialect p.r.o.nunciation is so difficult to make out, and that she swallows so many syllables in order to make the metre right, as there are generally too many feet, and it is only the delicacy of her declamation that makes up for the incorrectness of the rhymes and the verses. For instance, she constantly says _lo_ instead of _il_ (_lo soldato_), and she can never tell me how many words there are in a line, since neither she nor Maria knows what a single word, as opposed to several, is, and because it is no use spelling the word to her and asking: "Is that right?" since she cannot spell, and does not recognise the letters. Saredo tells me that a driver who once drove him and his wife about for five days in Tuscany sang all day long like Filomena, and improvised all the time. This is what she, too, does continually; she inserts different words which have about the same meaning, and says: "It is all the same" (_c'e la stessa cosa_). On the other hand, she always keeps to the metre, and that with the most graceful intonation; never a faulty verse:

Fior di giacinto!

La donna che per l'uomo piange tanto-- Il pianto delle donne e pianto finto.

Amore mio!

Non prendite le fiori di nessuno, Se vuoi un garofletto, lo do io.

Fior di limone!

Limone e agra, e le fronde son' amare, Ma son' piu' amare le pene d'amor'.

Lo mi' amore che si chiama Peppe, Lo primo giuocatore delle carte Prende 'sto cuore e giuoca a tre-sette.

[Footnote:

Flower of the hyacinth!

The woman who weeps so much for the man's sake-- Yet, the complaint of women is a feigned one.

My love!

Do not accept flowers from anyone.

If thou wilt have a wall-flower, I will give it thee.

Flower of the lemon!

The lemon is sharp, and its leaves are bitter; But more bitter are the torments of love.

My beloved, whose name is Peppe, He is the first to play cards, He has taken this heart and is playing a game of Three to Seven with it.]

In this way I wrote out some scores.

Spent an hour teaching Filomena her large letters up to N, and making her say them by rote, and with that end in view have divided them into three portions--ABCD--EFG--ILMN. She manages all right, except that she always jumps E and L. Lesson closed: "Were you at church to-day, Filomena?" "No, I have nothing to confess." "Did you go to church last Sunday?" "No, I have not been for six weeks now. I have committed no sin. What wrong do I do? I have no love affair, nothing." "What used you to confess?" "A few bad words, which had slipped out. Now I do nothing wrong." "But one can go wrong, without committing any sin, when one is high-minded, for instance." "I am not high-minded. If you, on the other hand, were to imagine yourself better than the friends who come to visit you, that would be quite natural; for you are better."

The day has been long. This evening the girl had errands to do for me.

She came in here after her Sunday walk in the Campagna. I said: "Shall we read?" (Just then a band of young people pa.s.sed along the street with a harmonica and a lot of castanets, and commenced a song in honour of Garibaldi. With all its simplicity, it sounded unspeakably affecting; I was quite softened.) She replied: "With pleasure." I thought to myself: "Now to see whether she remembers a word of what I said to her yesterday." But she went on at once: "Signore, I have been industrious."

She had bought herself an ABC and had taught herself alone not only all the large letters, but also all the little ones, and had learnt them all off by heart as well. I was so astonished that I almost fell back in the bed. "But what is this, Filomena? Have you learnt to read from someone else?" "No, only from you yesterday. But for five years my only wish has been to learn to read, and I am so glad to be able to." I wanted to teach her to spell. "I almost think I can a little." And she was already so far that--without spelling first--she read a whole page of two-letter spellings, almost without a mistake. She certainly very often said: "Da --ad," or read _fo_ for _of_, but her progress was amazing.

When she spells, she takes the words as a living reality, not merely as words, and adds something to them, for instance, _s--a, sa; l--i, li; r--e, re; salire alle scale_, (jump down the stairs.) "Filomena, I could teach you to read in three weeks." _She_: "I have always thought it the greatest shame for a man or woman not to be able to read." I told her something about the progress of the human race, that the first men and women had been like animals, not at all like Adam and Eve. "Do you think I believe that Eve ate an apple and that the serpent could speak? _Non credo mente_. Such things are like _mal'occhi_ (belief in the evil eye)." And without any transition, she begins, _sempre allegra_, as she calls herself--to sing a gay song. Just now she is exceedingly delighted with a certain large red shawl. There came a pedlar to the door; she sighed deeply at the sight of the brilliant red; so I gave it her.

She is a great lover and a connoisseur of wine, like myself. We taste and drink together every dinner-time. As she always waits upon me, I often give her a little cake and wine while I am eating. Now we have begun a new wine, white Roman muscat. But I change my wine almost every other day. Filomena had taken the one large bottle and stacked up newspapers round it on the table, so that if K.B. came he should not see it. It so happened that he came to-day, whilst I was dining and she eating with me. There was a ring; she wanted to go. "Stay; perhaps it is not for me at all; and in any case, I do not ask anyone's permission for you to be here." He came in, and said in Danish, as he put his hat down: "Oh, so you let the girl of the house dine with you; I should not care for that." Filomena, who noticed his glance in her direction, and his gesture, said, with as spiteful a look, and in as cutting a voice as she could muster: "_Il signore prende il suo pranzo con chi lui pare e piace._" (The gentleman eats with whomsoever he pleases.) "Does she understand Danish?" he asked, in astonishment. "It looks like it," I replied. When he had gone, her _furia_ broke loose. I saw her exasperated for the first time, and it sat very comically upon her. "Did you ask him whom _he_ eats with? Did he say I was ugly? Did you ask him whether his _ragazza_ was prettier?" (She meant a Danish lady, a married woman, with whom she had frequently met K.B. in the street.)

She said to me yesterday: "There is one thing I can do, sir, that you cannot. I can carry 200 pounds' weight on my head. I can carry two _conchas_, or, if you like to try me, all that wood lying there."

She has the proud bearing of the Romans.

Read with Filomena for an hour and a half. She can now spell words with three letters fairly well. This language has such a sweet ring that her spelling is like music. And to see the innocent reverence with which she says _g-r-a, gra_,--it is what a poet might envy me. And then the earnest, enquiring glance she gives me at the end of every line. It is marvellous to see this complete absorption of a grown-up person in the study of _a-b, ab_, and yet at the same time there is something almost great in this ravenous thirst for knowledge, combined with incredulity of all tradition. It is a model such as this that the poets should have had for their nave characters. In Goethe's _Roman Elegies_, the Roman woman's figure is very inconspicuous; she is not drawn as a genuine woman of the people, she is not nave. He knew a Faustina, but one feels that he afterwards slipped a German model into her place.

Filomena has the uncompromising honesty and straightforwardness of an unspoilt soul. Her glance is not exactly pure, but free--how shall I describe it? Full, grand, simple. With a _concha_ on her head, she would look like a caryatid. If I compare her mentally with a feminine character of another poet, Lamartine's Graziella, an Italian girl of the lower cla.s.ses, like herself, I cannot but think Graziella thin and poetised, down to her name. The narrator, if I remember rightly, teaches her to read, too; but Graziella herself does not desire it; it is he who educates her. Filomena, on the contrary, with her anxiety to learn, is an example and a symbol of a great historic movement, the poor, oppressed Roman people's craving for light and knowledge. Of Italy's population of twenty-six millions, according to the latest, most recent statistics, seventeen millions can neither read nor write. She said to me to-day: "What do you really think, sir, do you not believe that the Holy Ghost is _una virtu_ and cannot be father of the child?" "You are right, Filomena." "That is why I never pray." "Some day, when you are very unhappy, perhaps you will pray." "I have been very unhappy; when I was a child I used to suffer horribly from hunger. I had to get up at five o'clock in the morning to work and got eight _soldi_ for standing all day long in a vineyard in the sun and digging with a spade, and as corn was dear and meat dear, we seven children seldom had a proper meal. Last year, too, I was hungry often, for it was as the proverb says: 'If I eat, I cannot dress myself, and if I dress myself I cannot eat.' (What a sad and illuminating proverb!) Sir, if there were any Paradise, you would go there, for what you do for me. If I can only read and write, I can earn twice as much as I otherwise could. Then I can be a _cameriera_, and bring my mistress a written account of expenditure every week."

Filomena knows that Saredo is a professor at the University. But she does not know what a professor or a University is. She puts her question like this: "Probably my idea of what a university is, may not be quite correct?"

No one comes now. An invalid is very interesting at first, and arouses sympathy. If he continue ill too long, people unconsciously think it impossible for him to get well, and stay away. So the only resource left me all day is to chat with Filomena, to whom Maria has entrusted the nursing of me. Every evening I read with her; yesterday she had her fourth lesson, and could almost read straight off. Her complexion and the lower part of her face are like a child's; her undeveloped mental state reveals itself, thus far, in her appearance. I told her yesterday, as an experiment, that there were five continents and in each of them many countries, but she cannot understand yet what I mean, as she has no conception of what the earth looks like. She does not even know in what direction from Rome her native village, Camerino, lies. I will try to get hold of a map, or a globe. Yesterday, we read the word _inferno_. She said: "There is no h.e.l.l; things are bad enough on earth; if we are to burn afterwards, there would be two h.e.l.ls." "Good gracious! Filomena, is life so bad? Why, you sing all day long." "I sing because I am well; that is perfectly natural, but how can I be content?"

"What do you wish for then?" "So much money (_denari_) that I should be sure of never being hungry again. You do not know how it hurts. Then there is one other thing I should like, but it is impossible. I should like not to die; I am so horribly afraid of death.

I should certainly wish there were a Paradise. But who can tell! Still, my grandmother lived to be a hundred all but three years, and she was never ill for a day; when she was only three years from being a hundred she still went to the fields like the rest of us and worked, and was like a young woman (_giovanotta_). Mother is forty-two, but although she is two years older than my aunt, she looks quite young.

_Chi lo sa!_ Perhaps I may live to be a hundred too, never be ill-- I never have been yet, one single day,--and then go in and lie down on the bed like she did and be dead at once."